Leonid Sednev

Who was Leonid Sednev?

Leonid Ivanovich Sednev (Russian: Леонид Иванович Седнев) (1903-1929) was a kitchen boy (chef's assistant) who served the former Russian Imperial Family during their exile to the Siberian village of Tobolsk in 1917, and in Yekaterinburg in 1918[1]. He served with his father, Ivan Dmitriyevich Sednev, a child lackey[2].

Sednev was spared by Yakov Yurovsky just six hours before the shooting of the Romanov family on July 17, 1918. According to an unconfirmed testimony, he was put on a train on July 20 by officials from the Ural Regional Soviet and sent to Kaluga District, where his family lived. Sednev is alleged to have written a brief set of memoirs of his time in the Ipatiev House, but they have not been proven to exist.[citation needed].

On October 1, 2008 a petition to rehabilitate the Imperial Family, and a large number of servants, was presented to the Presidium of the Russian Supreme Court. Among the list is this excerpt: "In the late 1920’s in the Yaroslavl Oblast, E.S. Kobylinsky, the former head of the guard of the royal family during their exile in Tobolsk, and L. Sednev, who in childhood was a cook’s helper in the Ipatiev House, were executed for counter-revolutionary activity."